In recent years, there has been a demand for environmental consideration with regard to even pneumatic tires from the perspective of protecting the global environment. Specifically, there has been a demand for performance which enhances fuel economy while maintaining high strength.
In order to improve fuel economy, a pneumatic tire should be produced using a rubber composition capable of suppressing heat build-up during travel. In particular, it is thought that fuel economy can be improved by reducing the heat build-up in treads, which are in contact with the road surface during travel, and sidewalls, which repeatedly undergo substantial deformation during travel.
In Patent Document 1, with the objective of achieving low heat build-up while maintaining hardness and modulus and imparting high breaking elongation, the present applicant provides “a rubber composition for a tire produced by blending from 1 to 80 parts by mass of a regenerated polyethylene terephthalate powder into 100 parts by mass of at least one type of a diene rubber selected from the group consisting of natural rubbers, butadiene rubbers, styrene-butadiene copolymer rubbers, isoprene rubbers, and ethylene-propylene-diene terpolymers” ([Claim 1], [0005]) and proposes “to blend from 1 to 30 parts by mass of a carboxyl group or an anhydrous carboxyl group-containing polyethylene into 100 parts by mass of a diene rubber” from the perspective of further enhancing the aforementioned objective (effect) ([Claim 2] [0007]).